7/15/99 – Thursday – 15:00

In Kagbeni, and now we’re not doing any pass. We’re going straight to Muktinath tomorrow, staying a night and heading straight back to Beni. Kinda depressed and angry/irritable in general. Not sure why yet.

I’m back. Took a shower. Part of it is $. Another part, I’m sure, is that we’re not going to climb any higher than Muktinath. That really disappoints me, even though it just came up a couple days ago.

Another part is that we have 3 weeks left, with basically nothing to do. Basically from the day after tomorrow we’re on our way home. We trek down, bus to Pokhara, hang our for a week, fly to KTM, hang out, and fly home.

Yesterday I forgot to write about our afternoon trek. I wanted to walk to Kaisang, SE of Jomsom, on the way to the Mesokanto Pass. Jeremy wanted to come with, so we took off. We only had 2 hours, though, cuz lunch came late. So we just decided to walk for an hour and turn around. We walked for 45 mins, got on the wrong trail, and it was dangerous. Shale path on the side of the hill with high winds. Then Jeremy wanted to climb a hill, so we started up. I’ve never been scared so badly in my life. I honestly thought several times I was gonna die there. It was not steep, but it was all shale, and it broke off easily. We climbed up and down in a half hour, then walked back.

I bought a book of 100 O Henry stories yesterday. It’s got some good stuff.

Staying at the Annapurna Guest House, and it’s pretty nice. Hot showers cost $, but there are attached baths with each room. Lunch took 2 hours, cuz only one girl was working. The rest are in the fields.

Some people want to get horses (Rs. 500) or porters (200) for tomorrow’s trek. I think that would be stupid.